We have always been somewhat cynical about ZDNet. Its business model had a lot to do with it, but it was not just that. We are still not sure why Carla lost her job, but we can only guess based on her vague explanation. This post is not about ZDNet the global site, which is a liability that the UK site does not deserve to justify. And to be fair, ZDNet UK has some talented writers whom I like and have praised before, e.g. Rupert and Jamie (the occasional blogger). I must be forgetting some. Ingrid Marson was also very good and we mentioned her before.
Novell's sale of hundreds of open-source patents to a consortium featuring Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and EMC has become more likely to go through, as the US Department of Justice has failed to block the sale.
The antitrust division of the Department of Justice (DoJ) had made Novell and the consortium, CPTN Holdings, agree to not carry the sale through until 12 April, so the DoJ could review the sale. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday, Novell said that date had arrived "without action from the DOJ to enjoin the sale".
Dear,
Please find below the comment posts you made on ZDNet UK that were removed as containing allegations against specific companies that need to be verified.
If you can provide first-hand or independent substantiation of the allegations you make, we will be happy to consider re-instating the comments. I have pasted the removed comments below for you as reference.
I hope you understand why we have taken this step. When you signed up for your account on ZDNet UK, you agreed to abide by the terms and conditions and code of conduct on the site. This includes:
Be legal Don't use unlawful language (for instance, language that is libellous or obscene) or participate in other unlawful activities in the community – if you do, we will remove the posting without warning and are likely to close your account. You are responsible for all the content you post on the site, which includes making sure you don't break any applicable law.
Please let me know if you have any questions about why we have taken this step.
Regards,
Karen Friar Community and news editor
Comments listed below have been removed as they make allegations that need substantiating:
1) Well, while we're at it, Techrights also published leaked E-mails from Waggener Edstrom -- E-mails that very clearly show how Microsoft coordinated with 'reporters' the planting (their term, not mine) of news which was hostile towards Linux, which is why my suspicion of the likes of Jack is not unfounded.
Microsoft is not just a normal technology company, it's more like a marketing company. And I can't help but feel baffled by the account summary of http://twitter.com/zdnetuk_News because it says "All the latest business technology news, covering security, mobile, Microsoft and much more".
Why is Microsoft the only brand mentioned? It's not even the most highly valued technology company anymore. Let's talk about the real issues, not about people. You're steering the debate towards ad hominem.
2) Microsoft's Public Relations department, Waggener Edstrom, edits Wikipedia. It's well documented. http://techrights.org/2008/12/05/waggener-edstrom-wikipedia/
3) [continued]
[quote] There was (possibly) malware on a computer owned by Spanair. That computer was at headquarters, hundreds of miles from the plane and crash, and was used to file maintenance reports. Its connection to the crashed flight was that if all had gone well, a day or two *AFTER* the crash, a maintenance report on that plane was due to be filed, and the computer was supposed to then notice that the plane had had the same problem three times in a short period (a problem unrelated to the crash), and flag for further investigation. There is speculation that this flagging would have perhaps failed due to the malware. [/quote]
That's beside the point. There was malware there. The context in which I wrote this post was a claim from Microsoft Florian (the lobbyist) that IBM was to blame for the crash -- a lie which he repeated several times.
[quote] I'll stop with the examples now, although I have dozens more (some hilarious, like a fairly recent one claiming that the iPad--excuse me, hypePad--has been a big failure commercially). [/quote]
Got more example? Go ahead. Don't entertain the audience with mythical ones. SCO said it had "mountains of evidence" that Linux was a ripoff of 'its' UNIX. Did it show these "mountains of evidence"?
4) [continued]
[quote] Next time he writes about Clinton and Gates and their "special relationship", he'll cite the second article, so you'll have to click through twice to see original sources and find out his claim is not supported. [/quote]
There are many examples which you could find. Search Techrights to find external links, too.
[quote] Here's another good example of poor research: http://techrights.org/2011/01/12/kinect-vs-move-and-truth/. He praises Sony for selling 4.1 million Moves in 2 months, and says it is beating Kinect. I invite you to do the research that Roy either didn't do, or purposefully ignored. You'll find Kinect did 4 million in ONE MONTH, and by two months was at something like 8 million. (Oh, Sony's numbers were "sell in", and Microsoft's were "sell through". The former is how many have been pushed into the sales channel, the latter is how many have sold to consumers. I.e., Sony's numbers included stock sitting on shelves). [/quote]
Sony seems to have gamed numbers by channel-stuffing, much in the same way that Microsoft always done (and Techrights kept good record of that). If the Sony 'numbers game' fooled us, then we may have an error there, one error in a pile of 13,000+ posts (which may make the above nitpicking on being deceived by Sony, makers of rootkits and lawsuits against PS3 enthusiasts).
[quote] A final example: http://techrights.org/2010/08/26/aviation-and-windows-2/. He claims the crash of a Spanair plane was caused by malware. This is an outright lie. The crash was caused by the flaps being in an incorrect position at takeoff, because the pilots did not go through the preflight checklist. There was a warning system that should have warned them of this--but it was not a computerized warning system. [/quote]
That seems like revisionism from you. It has been well established that malware caused it.
5) [...cont]
More people deserve to be aware of the shady industry which calls itself PR and is sometimes the creation of companies which become its clients (it is proxifying). One company which Microsoft uses (and was created by a former Microsoft employee) brags about methods of auto-finding critics and auto-generating blog comments from templates in order to rapidly respond to criticism, so it's semi-automated. If the message cannot be shot down, the messenger gets disgraced; if that's not enough, this sometimes escalates to intimidation and harm (not physical harm).
I should add that Microsoft employees have publicly compared me to Unabomber, a serial killer. Those who accuse me of "libel" conveniently take a one-side, double-standard approach. If they have an issue with something I wrote they should speak out as we have a good track record of correcting errors (we amended about 20 blog posts among 13,000+). Just because someone does not like an opinion does not make this opinion "libel". Blogs provide opinions a lot of the time and Techrights is carefully worded.
If someone wishes to ask questions, issue a correction, and also find out that we are amicable people can join us at the IRC channels. We are not of the stereotype our detractors claim us to be.
NB - it appears as though the ZDNet comment component just devoured links that I put in my previous comments, e.g. the one from Wired Mag.
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This comment has been removed as it suggests another reader is attacking you - if you are prepared to remove the part about 'Beck', it can be reposted:
[continued]
[quote] I challenge you to actually SERIOUSLY read Techrights for a couple of weeks. By "seriously" I mean read each article and do a good fact checking on it. Follow the links until you get to original sources. Check those sources and see if (1) they actually support what Schestowitz is citing them for, and (2) if they seem to be legitimate sources. [/quote]
Thanks for urging people to read it from the source rather than by hearsay about the site.
[quote] I guarantee that if you do this, you'll be posting another blog entry, retracting this one. [/quote]
This does not seem to be the case, does it? And I'll tell you why. Over the years we've had people who entered the IRC channels only to troll us. And you know where these people are today? They are on the channel defending us. They defected. They realised that they have been incited against a site which actually *does* defend their interests. You can go ahead and try comparing me to Beck all you want, but people who actually spend a day reading me on Twitter/Identi.ca will see a stereotype mismatch.
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This comment has been removed as it is part of the series that makes allegations that need verifying. I am happy to reinstate this on its own if you like, but it makes little sense without the others:
[continued]
[quote] Here's a good example. In this article, http://techrights.org/2010/03/17/rich-uncle-bill-explored/, he writes about Bill Gates and Bill Clinton. They both testified before Congress on the same day urging an increase in US spending on global health. He also notes that there are photos of Bill Gates and Bill Clinton sitting next to each other. [/quote]
There is far more than that. If one follows the links and does further digging, it will become apparent. Did you know, for example, that the new speech writer of Bill and Melinda is Clinton's? I wrote a lot more about it than the above, but it takes patience to learn. I could provide links here, but ZDNet devours links that I put with the hypertext.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303362404575580340735524682.html
[quote] Then, about nine months later, he writes this article: http://techrights.org/2011/01/02/vietnam-with-proprietary-software/. In that article, he cites the first article as showing "the special relationship between Clinton and Gates". Testifying on the same day in Congress and being seen sitting next to each other is a special relationship? [/quote]
No. What you say is akin to claiming that just because Biden sat next to Geffen/other on some arbitrary date we can suddenly deduce that Biden is in Hollywood's pocket (with copyright policy). You use an anecdote to infer that it is an *isolated* example. It's not.
Karen Friar,
I find the removal of about 7 of my comments rather insulting as they contained no obscenity and did not contain any improper material (you can unmask these comments for readers to judge). It is a form of censorship, which is why I was reluctant to comment in ZDNet to begin with, but I was polite and all my claims have verifiable sources to back them. So again, I'm very disappointed that you removed comments and then suggested that there was something unlawful in them. This is exactly the type of thing which makes Techrights necessary.
Karen,
The insinuation that discussion like this needs to be done privately is counter-productive as I don't even have the comments you deleted (I will try Google cache). I think the action taken by the editorial team only serves to validate the original poster's point, which is about the targeting of a messenger for merely expressing an opinion (with sources) that others may find objectionable even though it's true. I don't want to start a whole debate about what's bad about censorship as there is plenty of literature about it. We take great pride in the fact that we never deleted any comments from Techrights (in over 4 years of running the site), not even those with vile language in them.
In my field of research (image analysis), if we had suppressed work which does not conform to the mainstream methods, do you know what would happen to scientific progress?
Respectfully,
Dr. Roy Schestowitz